


Descent

by JaineyBaby, timetospy



Series: la Vie en Rose [4]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), SPECTRE (2015), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, M/M, Oral Sex, Pining, Post-SPECTRE, Q is a mess, Q/OMC - NOT A SHIP, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-03
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-17 23:47:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5889844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaineyBaby/pseuds/JaineyBaby, https://archiveofourown.org/users/timetospy/pseuds/timetospy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Q had been tiptoeing around the flat on eggshells or weeks. The tragedy was that Q was still on that beach, hundreds of kilometers away, lost along the dark shore as he tread over the remains of the battered and broken bits the ocean had seen fit to throw against the sand. It hadn’t been eggshells under Q’s feet as he tried to navigate himself back to the wreck of his happiness, a sand castle that the tide had reclaimed and broken into nothingness. No, it had never been eggshells. It had been the ever-widening drifts of the remnants of his life ground into his raw soul without mercy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. They Don't Feel Like You

_January 2016_

 

Q-branch was silent except for the clicking of keyboard and mouse as Q worked at his desk. It was eerie, this oppressive stillness at ten o’clock in the morning. Q was used to hustle and bustle around him while he worked, and the quiet made it difficult to focus. All the junior agents had been reassigned, off reading the emails of housewives in Shrewsbury for that Combined Intelligence whatever it was in that ridiculous building across the Thames. Q could never remember what it was properly called, and couldn’t be bothered to care.

Max Denbigh was definitely dead, his brains smeared across the floor in a gruesome display, but that didn’t mean his ideas hadn’t made themselves at home in the hearts and minds of the MPs, who had decided that ‘tech specialist’ meant ‘data analyst,’ even though Q himself had attempted to explain the differences.

It hadn’t helped. They’d shut down Q-branch anyway, brushing the last remaining traces of the Double-Oh program under the rug for good.

He was cleaning up the last of his half-finished projects, tucking the code away in hidden files so he could tinker with it on his own time. They could take away his position, but unless they had someone even remotely on his level to check his files, which was frankly improbable, they couldn’t really stop him from taking his smaller projects home. The boat, which was going to remain less than half-finished, would have to stay behind.

His eyes kept roaming over the shiny new paint on the DB5 that was sitting in the workbay halfway between Q and the automotive lift. His last finished project. He wasn’t sure what was going to happen to her, now. He hadn’t had the heart to leave her unfinished, no matter what he thought of the man that had brought him the steering wheel nearly three years ago, asking Q to rebuild her.

He dropped his notes on the DB5 into the scrubber. She was the only one like it in the world, and he’d like to keep it that way.

Next, he moved the files for the Smart Blood Programme, although he couldn’t rationalize why he wanted to keep them, other than possibly for nostalgia. It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked to delete them, and it wouldn’t be the first time he’d ignored the order.

Even though there had only been one agent injected with the chips, and Q had no desire to keep track of him anymore, he had second thoughts about destroying his code completely. He hoped he was very happy, wherever he was, maybe pinned at the bottom of the Grand Canyon by a boulder and pissed on by one of those burros or something. Not that Q wanted to know. Not that Q thought about it much. Not that Q checked the trackers from time to time, hoping to see the pulsing green dot making it’s way up his street. (He wasn’t in the Grand Canyon. Hadn’t even left London.)

It wasn’t as though he was haunted by glacier-blue eyes and calloused fingers every waking moment, and most of the ones he was asleep. He was over it. It was done. It was done. It was done. It was done. It had become a mantra, like breathing and blinking; a reflex to get him through the day. He couldn’t say what it was, but here in the dead shell of Q Branch, checking the trackers one last time felt like choking on the past. He was seriously considering scrubbing the Smart Blood files, as well, when he was interrupted by the sound of the automotive lift descending.

He wondered, idly, who had been sent to monitor his clean-up. Some bureaucratic nuisance, most likely, ready to stand over his shoulder and watch as he deleted his flies and scrubbed the hard drive, not really understanding a lick of it.

But when the doors opened, Q’s heart leapt into his throat. The silhouette outlined in fluorescent lighting was not the dumpy, rumpled figure of a government lackey. He knew the shape of those shoulders, the tilt of that head, anywhere.

“Bond?”

Had he come back? After everything, had he actually come back to try to make amends? It had been weeks since Q had set eyes on the man. No calls, no messages, no indication that he recalled Q even existed, and now here he was, large as life, striding down the corridor between the workbays as carefree as you please.

Q had thought the worst of it was behind him, that James had left and was never going to return. The other shoe had dropped, and it was the end of whatever it was they obviously hadn’t had. Or was it? Q tried desperately to tamp down the tiny, incandescent hope in the pit of his stomach.

“What are you doing here?”

Q rounded the desk and approached James. He still wasn’t sure whether he wanted to kill him or kiss him, and at this point either might end with Q on the floor, bleeding internally.

“Good morning, Q,” James said, as though he’d just dropped in for a quick chat before lunch, as though they’d spoken only yesterday about whose turn it was to collect the dry cleaning and pick up cat food from the shops. God, what would he give to have an argument about the dry cleaning?

He was almost close enough to touch when something in James’ eyes made him halt in his tracks. They were flat, almost glassy, with none of the wit and sparkle in them that Q knew should be there. As if a wall had been set firmly in place that Q had no hope of ever scaling.

“I thought you’d gone.” Q wasn’t sure how the words had come out around the lump in his throat.

“I have,” James said, and it was all Q could do to keep it together.

“There’s just one thing I need.” _Of course._

Q swallowed hard, the brightening hope in his gut repellent. There was the faintest question in the arch of James’ brow, the tiniest narrowing of eyes, but it vanished as soon as it had appeared, and James pulled at his cufflink. Q tried not to look at the gesture, tried not to see it as yet another flippant way James turned their relationship into a meaningless joke.

Q said nothing, not trusting his voice, not trusting himself not to shout, to scream, to sob into the shoulder of that bespoke suit with its clean lines and perfect stitching. He couldn’t take anything for granted, and James’ expression was inscrutable.

When James’ eyes tore away from his and landed on the car, he knew. It was one last game. A final ‘fuck you’ from the man who had already taken everything that explosive November night, leaving Q with only a kind of emptiness that plagued him day and night. The blood roared in his ears, drowning out any other sound, and his hands balled into fists, but he’d be damned if James Bloody Bond won at this, Q wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

It was better this way. Then he’d finally be rid of James and he wouldn’t have to look at that bloody car anymore, either. He could do this. He could stand here calmly and pretend that they’d both had a lapse in judgement, or perhaps a lapse in memory, or even just basic common sense because Q had known at the beginning, hadn’t he? He had been warned against this very thing. It was James Bond: 101. Never. Get. Attached.

Q turned on his heel and stalked back to a cabinet, punching in the combination with a bit more force than was necessary, and plucked the keys to the DB5 off the peg. Q wanted to throw them, wanted to smash them on the concrete floor at James’ feet and scream at him.

But that would be letting James win. And Q couldn’t do that. Not this time. Not ever again.

He wrapped his fingers around the keys, holding them just tightly enough so they wouldn’t slip through his fingers. His steps were measured as he returned to James, stopping closer than necessary, James’ familiar scent enveloping him, and once again Q had to steel his nerves, coax his resolve into the tilt of his chin. _We can both do this,_ he tried with his eyes. _We can both stand here and pretend._ His insides turned into a cold lump settling heavily just below his chest. _We can both say it meant nothing._

He let the keys dangle off his index finger between them, a challenge, the final test. Q’s hand was perfectly steady. James had the decency to frown before slowly pulling the keys away.

“Thank you,” he said.

Q could only nod, praying that his shattered heart didn’t show all over his face. He kept a small smirk plastered on his mouth, concealing the burning behind his eyes. Every nerve ending in his body was screaming to do more, but he couldn’t bring himself to move. _We can both pretend it was just a game._

Q turned away first, returning to his desk and fiddling with the parts that were still spread out on the shelf behind it, pointedly not watching as he heard the car door open and shut and the engine turn over. She purred like a goddamn kitten. It was his best work. He’d poured every trick he knew into the smallest detail. A labor of love, one might say, and the thought left a sour taste in his mouth.

There was a small part of Q that hoped James would think of him every time he sat behind the wheel, hoped that there would be this tiny jolt of raw nerves every time James started her up. But he knew better, didn’t he? There was no remorse in that machine, no sentiment. The whole thing had been a game, an elaborate game for one, and Q merely a plaything. James had used him for years. Q wondered what it said about him that he’d allowed it. One more thing he couldn’t bring himself to analyze too closely.

He heard the lift begin its ascent behind him and when the hydraulics had fallen silent, Q collapsed to the floor, his face, already wet with tears, in his hands. _We can both pretend that I didn’t actually say that I loved you._

Q sat there, resting his head against a low shelf, for what seemed like hours, but could have just as easily been fifteen minutes. He couldn’t bring himself to move quite yet, even though the floor was cold and hard and his legs were beginning to fall asleep. His ribs ached.

He felt like whatever had been filling him up was now puddled around him on the floor. He knew he looked a fright, eyes red-rimmed and puffy, nose running, glasses spotted with dried tears, but he couldn’t be arsed to care. There was nobody around to notice, anyway.

“Hello?”

Q jumped at the voice, scrabbling at his pocket and the square of cloth within, and doing his best to wipe the last of the moisture from his face and the spots from his glasses. He couldn’t do much about the rest.

“Yes.” Q’s voice sounded rough in his own ears, he could only imagine what it sounded like to whoever had decided to venture down here.

He managed to get himself off the floor before the footsteps down the hall reached the doorway.  He brushed off his trousers and jacket just as Tanner poked his head around the corner. Q just managed to stop himself from telling him to fuck off.

“Sorry to pop in unannounced like this,” he began. If he was going to say anything else, the words died on his lips as Q turned to face him.

“It’s fine,” Q said, waving away the concern written all over Tanner’s face. No, it really wasn’t fine, but what was he supposed to say?

“No, sorry, I’ll just-,” Tanner moved back into the corridor.

“M will need to be informed, I suppose,” Q said to Tanner’s retreating back. Tanner stopped and took a few steps back up the corridor.

“Informed of what?”

Q could hear the hesitance in his voice, his unwillingness to involve himself in whatever it was Q was obviously going through, but somebody should know that it was gone, at least.

“The car,” Q gestured to the empty workbay, “was taken.”

Tanner stepped into the room, then, and looked from the workbay to Q and back again, and Q could see the links connect on Tanner’s face. Q wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful that it was an unspoken truth between them. Tanner didn’t ask and Q didn’t have to say, but they both knew where the car had gone.

“I’m sorry,” Tanner said, softly.

“Since I’ve already deleted all the relevant files, it is likely irretrievable.” He was determined to glaze over Tanner’s concerns. He couldn’t afford to lose it again. Not now, not here, not in this hollow place with its hollow walls and hollow memories. Not when that hollowness threatened to devour Q alive at any moment. Q hoped that the car and it’s owner would simply disappear. Given the latter’s track record, it was the most likely outcome.

“Of course. I’ll tell M.”

“Thank you.” It was a clear dismissal.

Tanner moved to leave again, but paused, his hand resting on the wall. He didn’t look at Q as he spoke, which suited Q perfectly.

“You sure you’re alright?”

Q sighed and pressed his lips together. As much as Q appreciated Tanner’s attempt to care, he found he would have rather been left alone. Tanner’s kindness only seemed to make him want to lash out, the hollowness beginning to reach in and win.

“I will be?” Even to Q it sounded like a question.

There was a long silence, then Tanner turned and stepped up to the edge of Q’s desk.

“You have some holiday time coming, don’t you?” Q just managed to stop himself from flinching at how soft Tanner’s voice was, how much he was trying to understand.

Q wanted to think about something, _anything_ except how much holiday time he’d accumulated during his tenure in the Double-Oh program. He’d calculated it down to the minute six months ago. He had nearly two weeks’ worth left, now.

“I need to finish this, it’s been too long already. They want the space emptied as soon as possible. A, uh, server farm, I think.” Q tried for uninterested. It came out desperate. _Please leave,_ he may as well have begged. _Please don’t look at me like I’m broken. I know I am broken._

“I’m sure it will keep for a few days more.”

Q studied Tanner’s face for a long moment, conflicted. He’d thrown himself into his work after those first two days, drowning himself in mundane tasks, barely going home except to shower and feed the cats. What would he do with all that time except wallow in self-pity and drown himself in Cabernet Sauvignon?

Q shook his head.

“What was it you needed, Tanner?”

“Oh, no, it’s not…,” Tanner began, then took a deep breath. “You already know. I was… I wanted to…” He shrugged helplessly. “Milton caught him on the CCTV outside. I thought maybe a goodbye, but -”

“I see,” Q hissed, and he felt like all the pieces had finally fallen into place. Q hadn’t even considered the CCTV, but that hadn’t stopped _him._ Performance art, the whole sordid tale. No reason to come back if there wasn’t an audience.

“Thank you, Tanner, that will be all.” Q turned his back on Tanner and picked up a few bits of wire on his desk and began twisting them together, his fingers worrying them until they broke apart, and he flung them back onto the table in disgust.

Tanner leaned in and placed a hand on Q’s shoulder, which Q glared at until it was removed. Tanner sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“Look. I’m not saying take a whole week,” he lifted a shoulder and his mouth pressed into a thin line, “but maybe getting out of here for a day or two would do you some good. Get some rest, you know?”

Q rounded on him. Tanner didn’t deserve it, not really, but he was there and he was being rational, and Q suddenly couldn’t stand it.

“I said ‘that will be all,’ Tanner. What about that is so difficult to understand?” He could feel the anger, hot and close, snapping behind his eyes. Tanner took a step back, his eyes wide, but Q didn’t care. _Let him be afraid_ , Q thought. _It’s about time I inspired fear in somebody._

“Q,” Tanner said, and made irritating ‘calm down’ movements with his hands.

“No.” Q snapped his laptop shut. “I will not be taking a holiday. No, I am not going to go home.” Q took a single step forward, and the heat of his anger filled his arms and chest with buzzing intensity. It felt good, it felt powerful, and he would keep the anger if it meant he didn’t feel empty. _But yelling had never solved anything before, had it?_ He found he didn’t care.

“I am tired of everyone else assuming they know what I need, or want. Obviously what I want matters very little, and what I need is some god damn peace and quiet!” Tanner shrank back, and Q couldn’t help but feel a little thrill of satisfaction. He slammed his knuckles into the worktop for emphasis, the burn of it pulling him back from the edge of rage. Q paused, his breaths shallow and labored, his hands still balled into fists.

“I’m sorry, Tanner,” he continued, not sounding sorry at all. “But I will not ‘get some rest’ while I have work to do. Do I make myself clear?”

The pity in Tanner’s eyes made Q want to scream at him again. He was not a thing to be pitied, he was not a delicate flower, no matter what _he_ thought.

“Inescapably,” Tanner murmured, then turned on the ball of his foot and walked back out of Q-branch the way he’d come.

Q leaned against his desk, staring down at the bits and pieces of circuitry that seemed to accumulate around him no matter how many boxes he filled or how many times he cleared the desk. He set his laptop down on the bottom shelf of his desk and pulled another empty cardboard box over. With one swipe, Q toppled everything on his desk into the box, then kicked it away, pulling another box over to the shelves to repeat the process.

Glass and ceramic shattered, circuit boards cracked, tangles of wire and plastic cascaded off the shelves along with books and papers, his life’s work deemed irrelevant by a handful of idiotic government officials.

It took all the boxes he had left, but eventually the desk and shelves were empty, their contents piled up in the middle of the room. Q stared at the pile, half as tall as he was and nearly two meters across. He pulled out the pack of matches he’d pocketed along the way and struck one, watching it flare to life before subsiding into a tiny flame. It was a tempting notion, but he let the flame die out without touching it to the edge of a box. The gesture was useless, the suppression system would douse the flame before it even had a chance to consume a quarter of the detritus he’d stacked there. Let those officials cart it off, dump it in the Thames, bury it under Stonehenge for all he cared.

Q collected his laptop from the desk and stood next to the lift, a finger poised over the first in a bank of switches. He held his machine to his chest like a shield, watching as one-by-one the lights of Q-branch extinguished as he flipped each down.

He patted his pocket as the lift ascended, double-checking that the two items he’d wanted to keep out of the whole lot were still there. The hard lumps of plastic felt like pebbles under his hand, but they were safe and secure in the bottom of his trouser pocket, nestled in the crease of his thigh.

Q emerged into the dull grey afternoon and blinked owlishly as the wall closed behind him. His first stop was Moneypenny’s office, where he dropped off his laptop for her to deliver to whoever it was that thought they were going to be able to tell if he’d kept any information from his stint as Quartermaster. He’d pick it up first thing Monday, if they didn’t send it along with termination forms.

Moneypenny was sitting behind her bright, shiny new mahogany desk in her bright, shiny new glass office that looked out over the river. It would have been stunning on a sunny day, but the clouds hung low, threatening rain. Q laid his laptop in the center of her blotter, next to a small potted orchid that was blooming in yellow and white. Q irrationally wanted to throw the plant out the window. She looked up at him, her lips smiling, but her eyes full of pity. The expression blew the embers of his anger and shame into a fire again.

“Tanner said -”

“I’m sure he did.” Q cut her off before she could get started.

“I’m sorry.”

“For what? My idiocy or his disregard?”

“I didn’t -” Moneypenny frowned. “I knew he was a bastard, but that was just cold.”

“Yes,” Q said, his tone clipped and precise and just this side of disdainful. “I think this is the part where you say, ‘I told you so.’”

“Q…”

He fought back the lump that had risen again in his throat. He couldn’t stand the way Moneypenny was looking at him, as though he were an injured bird she’d found on the pavement and had taken home to nurse back to health. He had flown headlong into a window, and yes he was broken, but he certainly did not want anyone else’s help, no matter how well-intentioned.

He turned and fled, all but running down the ridiculous half-ramp, half-staircase that wound around the atrium and nearly barrelling over an agent on his way to the exit.

Once on the pavement, he drew in a lungful of air. It was easier, surrounded by strangers, to pretend he hadn’t been crushed beneath the heel of a shiny black bespoke oxford.  He walked to his flat and stood outside, his hand resting on the gate, for several minutes before deciding that he couldn’t go in. It felt like resignation, or worse following Tanner’s advice. The need to curl up under his duvet and forget that the rest of the world existed was intense, and the only way Q knew to fend it off was to be out. Besides, there was still too much of _him_ left in the flat right now, and he’d already promised himself he wouldn’t destroy what was left, no matter how painful. He needed to remember, if only to ensure that he wouldn’t repeat the same mistakes.

So he walked on, through the memories that stained everything black and grey and red, and kept walking. Past shops and flats and houses and mothers with pushchairs and teens loitering about on the pavement and bus stops and train stations. He walked through tiny side-streets and down thoroughfares, turning at random, his head up and his eyes cold. The crowds parted in front of him, the Red Sea to his Moses, and closed up again behind, leaving no trace of his passage. _Maybe,_ he thought, the bitterness rising up in the back of his throat, _this is what it’s like, being a Double-Oh. Sliding through a sea of people unnoticed and untouched and unchanged by the thousands of lives you barely brush against._ Q stopped outside of a shop, pretending to adjust his tie in the reflection as he caught his breath. _Was I just another thing to brush up against?_

He walked for hours, hands shoved into the pockets of his coat, the sky slowly darkening behind its blanket of clouds, and eventually it began to mist, then drizzle. Once the rain began in earnest, sometime after the streetlamps had flickered on, Q ducked into the first doorway that looked inviting.

It wasn’t a large pub, but it was comfortable, and he didn’t feel like he wasn’t supposed to be there. A bit rough around the edges perhaps, but the smell that enveloped him when he walked in was heavenly. Brick oven pizza. Q felt his mouth water, and realized that he was, actually, quite hungry. He slid onto a stool with a shrug.

The rain continued unabated, the pub was warm and the beer was good. Q was quite comfortable on his stool, pretending to be interested in the football game someone had turned on at some point after his second pint.

He’d just finished his fourth when the blond sat down next to him and smiled when Q made a rather dry remark about one of the announcers. His jawline was wrong, his shoulders too narrow, eyes too dark, but he leaned forward when Q spoke, laughed at his ridiculous puns, seemed to hang on his every word, and that was enough. Tonight it was enough, and Q found himself ordering a dirty vodka martini to make an impression. The blond was suitably impressed, cocking an eyebrow in a way that wasn’t nearly aloof enough.

He was more than half-drunk when the idea struck him. Well, not really an idea so much as a nebulous thought that he didn’t want to look at too closely. Two could play at the seduction game, never mind that they weren’t technically playing anymore.

He slid closer to the blond and smiled, trying out the ‘cocky bastard’ look that had come so naturally to _him_ . Q had practiced in the mirror for hours before heading to the gallery that day. He felt like a fraud, but the blond leaned closer yet, pressing his shoulder into Q’s. _Come into my parlor said the spider to the fly,_ Q thought, although he wasn’t sure who was who at the moment.  

He ordered another martini and downed it in three long swallows.

His hand came to rest on the blond’s knee. Q leaned in, noticing for the first time that the blond’s eyes were stormy grey-blue ringed in navy, not clear and brilliant and so bright he could barely look at them.

“That must be why the sky is so dreary,” Q said, and smirked. The confidence came easier, now, but that was just the alcohol buzzing through his veins.

“And why’s that?”

“All the blue is in your eyes.”

It was a bad line, possibly the worst, but the blond blushed, then chuckled and covered Q’s hand with his own.

“And yours hold an ocean.”

“Sky and sea, sounds like a recipe for a storm.” He cringed inwardly and wondered how it had even worked.

Q squeezed the blond’s knee, then slid his hand up to about the middle of his thigh, then went so far as to wink at him. Cheesy pickup lines and bad innuendo were not supposed to get you invited back to a bloke’s flat, but that is exactly what the blond suggested when he bent and whispered in Q’s ear.

Q threw a fifty-pound note on the bar like he had it to burn and they left, sharing an umbrella on the walk with Q’s hand stuck possessively in the blond’s back pocket. The blond’s flat was only three streets away, and as he unlocked the door, Q pulled him into a kiss that was more need than skill, but he was sighing into Q’s mouth all the same.

The small fraction of Q’s brain that was still functional began screaming at him to stop, apologise and walk away. The rest of him was greedily lapping up every caress, every sigh, every brush of lips, and shoving them into the empty pit where his heart should have been, even if every time the blond’s fingers touched his skin it felt like lying.

“Upstairs?” Q murmured when they broke the kiss, shoving down and silencing the unrest in his own chest.

The blond nodded and Q all but pushed him up the staircase, trying to keep his hands on the blond’s hips. Once the bedroom door shut behind them, it was an awkward crush of lips, fingers scrabbling for zippers and buttons. Q set his glasses on the dresser, and it helped. The lines were blurred, the features hazy, and the alcohol made it easier to pretend. He pulled the blond’s face to his, cradling it in his hands. The gesture was more tender than he was intending, imparting a longing that belonged to someone else entirely, but it didn’t matter. The blond was groaning, and Q pushed him back toward the bed.

The blond sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, then scrambled back, fumbling for the drawer in the bedside table. Q crawled towards him, testing out a look of feral hunger, which had the desired effect, before pulling the blond’s hand away from the drawer and opening it himself, plucking out condoms and lube by the light of the streetlamp outside.

Q placed a line of kisses along the blond’s shoulder before murmuring in his ear, “I’m going to fuck you.”

He knew what those words had done to him, murmured close to his ear in the half-dark of his bedroom, strong legs pushing his knees apart, stubble rubbing raw against his throat.

The blond’s answer was a mewling whimper and vigorous nodding. Q hoped he’d been a bit more stoic about it, and the blond’s neediness threw him a bit out of his depth, but he shoved his doubts back down his throat with a kiss.

It was the work of mere minutes to have the blond opened up, his hole slick and quivering and waiting. Q had him facedown in the pillows as he sank inside, hands on his hips to steady himself as he began to move. He set a grueling pace, snapping his hips as he thrust in. The blond writhed beneath him, his shameless moans too high-pitched, too desperate. He grasped the blond’s cock, but once his fingers closed around it, he couldn’t help but notice all the minute differences, catalogue all the tiny details that were an insistent whisper of  _wrong_. It only took about four rough strokes before the blond was crying out his orgasm. Muscles spasmed around Q as he sank into the tight wet heat again and again. He was close, so close, just a few more thrusts-  

He bit back the name in his throat as he came, shuddering, his thumbs pressing so hard into the blond’s hips that he was sure he’d left bruises. He rolled off, chest heaving, his back to the blond. He didn’t speak as he did a bit of perfunctory cleanup before curling into himself and all but passing out.


	2. Laundry List

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is an inescapable monotony of day to day life as Q struggles to put his relationship with James behind him. But he's everywhere and in everything. Soon it becomes unbearable to even stay in the flat.

It was still dark when Q’s eyes popped open. For half-a-second he was disoriented, but it all came flooding back in grotesque detail as an unfamiliar body moved behind him. Q swallowed hard, his tongue thick and wooly against the roof of his mouth as he slipped silently out of the bed. He slid his glasses into place first, cringing as the earpieces grazed his temples. His head felt rotten, and he was sure that his brain would start oozing out of his ears at any moment. 

He collected his clothes and managed to find his way down into the sitting room to dress. He’d missed a sock, but he wasn’t about to go back for it. He stared back up the stairs one last time, shivered, and let himself out into the emptiness of the early-morning street. It had blessedly stopped raining and the crisp air helped to clear his lungs if not his head. He wandered aimlessly until he found a tube station, only to find that the first train wouldn’t be there for an hour yet. He settled himself in to wait, pulling his phone out of his pocket and scrunching down into his coat to ward off the chill in the pre-dawn air. 

His thumb brushed over the photos icon as he scanned his purposely meagre selection of apps, looking for something mindless to keep him occupied. It popped open, lighting up his screen with a thousand watt smile that had nothing to do with his brightness setting. Q slammed the home key, but he wasn’t fast enough to stop the image from taking over the screen for a gut wrenching split second.

There he stood, in a sky-blue cotton gauze shirt that made his eyes glow, grinning for Q’s camera next to a silver Corvette convertible from the ‘60s. The forecast had called for rain that day, Q remembered, and he’d groused that they wouldn’t be able to return to the beach. Q had known about the gallery, an entire building full to bursting with classic cars, but had been reluctant to mention it. Q wasn’t sure they wouldn’t have ended up gallivanting off through the countryside in one of the museum-quality vehicles. Q had threatened him to within an inch of his life, but he could still feel the grin that had cracked his face while he did. The man had jumped into the driver’s seat anyway, running his hands over the steering wheel, his eyes alight, and Q had laughed until his sides ached, and he’d joined in a moment later.  His laugh had always reminded Q of a rusty gate, not that it was squeaky and high-pitched, the opposite in fact, but that it was so rarely used it always needed a bit of loosening before it opened properly.

Q’s chest tightened and his phone glowed back at him innocently as he watched the home screen slide back into place, not really seeing it, reliving that day, the moments they’d stolen. Had it all meant so little? Had it really all been a game? It had seemed so real, the smiles and the laughter, the casual way they’d held hands as they walked. A dance on a cobbled street by the pier to a song played by a busker with a trumpet. 

His skin crawled as he remembered the way the blond’s hands had felt too small, too soft, too meek in a bed that had been cold before they’d even finished. 

There was a hard lump of nausea settling in the pit of his stomach, and he tried to tell himself that it was the oncoming hangover that clung sickeningly to his skin and not the wrongness of those eyes under too-dark lashes looking back up at him.

Q was still staring at the black screen on his phone when the train pulled in with a whoosh and a squeal.

If pressed, Q might have been able to recite the steps of his journey from the blond’s flat back to his own, but it all ran together in a haze of stops and starts and “Mind the Gap” and a couple of kids in track jackets and flat-brim caps shouting to each other across the carriage for more than half the trip.

Finally, Q stumbled up the stairs to his own flat, rummaged for the key for many more seconds than he should have needed, and banged his shin on the umbrella stand by the door when he finally got it open. He swore, gave the stand a perfunctory swipe with his foot and missed, tipping his balance enough that he stumbled back a step, catching himself on the doorway to the kitchen.

He did manage to fill and drink three large glasses of water before he shuffled down the short hall to the bedroom, shucked his clothes again, and fell onto the bed, not even bothering to scootch under the covers, despite the chill in the tips of his fingers and nose. He fell into sleep almost immediately.

He woke with a jolt, the remnants of a dream slipping away into obscurity, and both Isabo and Newton jumped to the floor with thuds and soft miaows. The last notes of a song turned into the silence that filled his flat. Something about roses.

“Sorry,” Q mumbled after the cats, throwing back the duvet he’d wrapped around himself in his sleep and stretching on his way to the shower to scrub away the stench of gin and someone else’s cologne.

He stood under the hot spray for far longer than he should have, mulling over the previous night in his mind, until the details became so blurry that it could have been anyone, even  _ him _ , and Q knew that way lay madness. It was doing its damndest to swallow him whole, but Q was clinging to the ridges of its throat for dear life, trying to climb back out. He’d nearly made it before that ghost of a man had walked back into his life for one final ‘fuck you,’ shoving him back down, almost to where he’d started from. In any event, it was well and truly done with, now. The whole of it. There was nothing left to keep him in London. Good riddance. But that didn’t stop the ache in his chest, it didn’t stop the thoughts oozing into his consciousness like blood from a wound he couldn’t stop poking.

Q turned off the tap and stepped out into the steaming bathroom. He dried off and wrapped the towel around his waist and used the hand towel to dry off the mirror above the sink. He sighed as he pulled out the bottle of paracetamol from the cabinet and shook two out and downed them with a swallow of water. His razor rested next to a suture kit he’d ‘borrowed’ from Medical six months ago that (thank Christ) he hadn’t needed to use. Even this, this simple daily routine had been colored by his memory. Q grit his teeth as he lifted the razor to his cheek and began the process. If he could actually grow a decent beard, he’d forgo it altogether.

Yesterday he had scraped his face with his ‘boy’s razor’ and it had barely registered. He’d gotten through his day with only a dull ache where the sharp throb had been the day before. He’d been rebuilding his walls brick by brick, day by day, only to have them flattened again in one fell swoop. His heart was as raw now as it had been then, in that cold, pre-dawn gloom, forced to watch him walk the wrong way across Vauxhall Bridge. He’d lost spectacularly at a game he thought he knew how to play. Was it such a surprise when he finally lost, though? Double-Oh-Seven had always been a highly skilled player.

He finished up, patting his face dry with the hand towel and smoothing on aftershave. He had gone back to his old scent, not willing to use the last of the one that had shown up on his desk three days after Christmas last year in a battered cardboard box with a Serbian postmark. The old one still smelled too sharp, almost grating, compared to the subtle spice of one he tried to deny he preferred.

_ He  _ was everywhere in this goddamn flat. In the creak of the floorboards at three in the morning, in the dust that skittered off the curtains when he pulled them shut, in the way Newton nudged at Q’s elbow asking when he’d be home. He was even in the paella Q had made out of habit one day about two weeks ago. He’d stuck it in the back of the fridge and had been meaning to throw it out, after discovering that it had tasted wrong as he sat in the empty flat, alone.  _ He  _ still existed here, even though it had never been his address, and Q hated it.

He had pulled the books off the shelves and the clothes from the closet and the DVDs from the basket next to the telly that first week and dropped the lot off at a charity shop. But what could he do about the insidious details of living around and alongside another person that had seeped into every corner, every hiding place, even the very walls of this place? It was like living with a ghost.

He shoved himself into his clothes, then steeled his resolve for the trek upstairs. The attic was the worst of the whole flat, but he had to go. 

He pulled down the stairs and climbed resolutely into the half-finished space. It was open and airy, with two large windows at the gable ends. When Q had bought the place, he envisioned exactly what this space should become, and had set about setting it up as a studio, an easel set by one window, the rest of the room now full to bursting with canvasses of all sizes. They were all covered with drop cloths now, but Q didn’t need to see them to remember what was underneath. Bright blue eyes stared out of half a dozen or so, more had the familiar contour of his back or a study in the texture of his scars. His style was more abstract than Turner, but still very much impressionist-inspired.

But he was not here to look at his paintings.

On a table in front of the window opposite the easel sat a terracotta pot with three grass-green leaves poking out of it.

“Good morning, orchid,” Q murmured as he picked up a misting bottle and began to spray the leaves. He didn’t know why he always greeted it that way, or at all for that matter, as if he were trying to remind it of what it was. He wasn’t even sure why he continued to care for it, but he knew it would hurt more to throw it out than it would to trek up here every morning, and so he kept it, turned it one-quarter turn every week, misted it daily, fertilized it regularly. It hadn’t bloomed again, but Q hadn’t been expecting it to, not yet. Maybe never. But as long as the leaves were still green, he would tend to it as best he could.

That done, he stepped carefully back down the stairs and tucked them back into the ceiling, then went on into the kitchen where Isabo and Newton were waiting, tails curled around their feet, for their breakfasts. Q scooped out the pungent mince onto their respective dishes, refilled the shared water bowl, and flipped on the kettle, which hissed at him angrily. He’d forgotten to fill it the day before. He switched it back off again and took it to the sink, filled it properly, then set it back on the base to boil. 

He ate an apple while he waited for the kettle, even though he wasn’t actually hungry. It was habit, even now, even without _ his _ voice mumbling, still half-asleep, about Q’s atrocious eating habits. Newton stole the last few mouthfuls of breakfast out of Isabo’s dish, as he always did in the morning. Isabo never seemed to mind.

He drank his tea, black, and then it was time to go. He gave the cats a good scratching behind the ears, forcing a smile into his voice as he told them he’d be back later, and locked the door behind him.

It may have been Saturday, but Q needed to be out. Down to the shops for some cat food and another bottle of paracetamol and Cabernet. Then a stop at the fish and chips stand around the corner from his flat for a quick (and greasy) lunch, after which he meandered towards the used bookshop three streets over, but he couldn't quite make himself walk through the door. He'd tried every Saturday, but it had been impossible. It was a shame because it was a lovely shop with just the right dust-to-books ratio. He’d found a lovely little cloth-bound copy of  _ Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica  _ there. Where on earth had it got to? When he remembered, he wished he hadn’t.

No, he wouldn't be going to the bookshop today. 

Sunday was staring at a blank canvas in the attic for three and a half hours before giving up and hoovering the sitting room, causing both Isabo and Newton to vanish for the rest of the afternoon.

Monday was his first day at the new headquarters. He'd petitioned to keep his section in the old Q-branch location, but, like everything, he'd been denied. One would think that people would be more grateful for his taking down an entire criminal network with its fingers in their government, but the threat had caused those in charge to panic, mistrusting the very technology that had saved them. 

Mallory had been given Denbigh’s position, and a massive restructuring was still in motion following the ‘unexpected detonation’ in the old CIS building. Q maintained a career in espionage, but only just. He should have been grateful to Mallory for the job, but all he felt was resentment. Mallory had allowed the Double Oh programme to be phased out during the upheaval. 

The antiseptic steel-and-glass monstrosity leered over the river with ill-disguised malice as Q approached. It sneered at him as he crossed the street and consumed him as he walked inside.

He swiped his security badge over the scanner just beyond the front door and walked on to the lifts. Always in the basement, but it suited him: the new offices were three floors below ground. His laptop was already sitting on top of his desk with a yellow sticky note on it that said ‘approved’ in long, spidery scrawl. Q pulled it off and binned it, then booted up the machine. He allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction as he drilled down into his Q-branch files, and found that they were all intact.

That first day was as close to torture as Q had ever experienced.

He was visited by no less than four dumpy bureaucrats in brown suits that he had only just managed to not actually roll his eyes at as they attempted to instruct him on his new position. His official title might have been “Technical Services Supervisor” but he hadn’t really been listening. He knew what was expected of him, and had made up his mind to not actively sabotage his career if he could help it. The rest was details. 

The days began to bleed together after that, a laundry list of obligations and distractions, too many long hours spent in the stark, cavernous room that housed more than half of his former Q-branch agents. He’d discovered the rest had been scattered, a few defecting entirely and going into private sector work. Q couldn’t blame them. It was monotony and drudgery, despite the fact that he’d retained a ‘supervisory position.’ 

The sheer volume of data that passed through their filters was so immense that nobody, not even Q, could hope to unravel most of it in time to actually do anything about, not even with a team combing it first. It didn’t help that there were no specific directives in this, no way to narrow down the scope, limit which pieces were important and which could safely be ignored.

That’s why there had been people like the Double-Ohs. Not only for pulling triggers, but because a human mind and human understanding surpassed any code Q could hope to write. Knowing a thing did not mean understanding it, after all, and while machines were more than capable of knowing, they did not understand. It was symbiosis, not competition. 

He stared out over the sea of monitors in front of him, each with its own agent typing or clicking busily away, and sighed. He was grateful to still be employed, but this was hardly satisfying. 

He was in the process of fine-tuning a back-track for tweets that had been flagged for further analysis (really what he wanted to be working on was a darknet comb, but that had to wait; the assessment algorithms were a bloody mess, they were barely functional) when he noticed Moneypenny walking past the glass wall at the back of the room. He tracked her across the glass, and she stopped at the door and opened it, clicking past the rows of agents at their workstations until she came up alongside his just as he finished a clause.

“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he murmured.

“Paperwork,” she replied. 

“You could have, I don’t know, emailed me.” He shrugged.

“Needs your signature,” Moneypenny said, laying the folder down on his keyboard. “The long one.” She tapped it gently.

Q’s head shot up. The last time he’d had to use that was when he’d been hired in.

“What for?” 

“Declassification. No longer considered high-risk.”

Q narrowed his eyes at her.

“Don’t worry, I didn’t peek.” She smiled at him. “You’ll always be ‘Q’ anyway.”

Q adjusted his glasses and glared at the nondescript manila folder with undisguised disgust. 

“I suppose this was inevitable.”

“You’ve not been hauled away for scrap,” Moneypenny said. “It’s just a change. For all of us.”

“But they didn’t have to all come at once,” he said, staring down at the desk. 

“You sound like an old man,” she chided, but there was fondness in her tone.

“Yes, alright, thank you, Moneypenny. Your insights have been invaluable. Any other advice?” This was almost normal, their teasing back and forth, and it was more comforting than Q wanted to acknowledge. 

Moneypenny considered him for a moment.

“You need to get more sleep,” she said at last. 

That was a truth that cut too close to the bone. He’d been out at his local until well past two in the morning, stumbling back to his flat so pissed he’d feared waking up drunk. He hadn’t, thank Christ, but tea and paracetamol hadn’t quite chased the worst of the hangover away.

“I’ll take that under advisement.”

Moneypenny rolled her eyes.

“Make sure you get that back to Mallory before the week is out,” she said, pointing to the folder.

“Yes,” Q said, pushing his glasses up his nose again and staring pointedly at his screen. “Thank you, Miss Moneypenny.”

She huffed a laugh before retreating back down the aisle and out the door, disappearing around the corner. As soon as she was out of sight, Q slid open the bottom drawer of his desk and dumped the folder in without opening it. 

  
  
  


The air was missing the knife-edge of winter as he walked home, and the sky was all but cloudless. He’d left the paperwork in his desk unsigned, and planned to do so for as long as he could get away with it. Something about giving up this one last bit of his past was one step too far. It was no longer his title, true, but there was something satisfyingly enigmatic about one’s name being a single letter. 

He stepped into his flat and shut the door behind him, leaning against it for a moment and sighing before shedding his parka and hanging it on the hook behind the door. Even now, he half-expected a navy Crombie to be perched on the other hook. 

One would think that, after a month, it wouldn’t cut so deeply anymore, that the nerve endings would have dulled, the flesh begin to knit together, but no. Granted, the wounds were further apart, but the scabs left him with a painfully tight itching that was nearly impossible not to scratch. 

Q patted Newton between the ears as he came to greet him, and the russet Maine Coon blinked slowly, then twined around Q’s legs before going to sit at the door.

“You can quit asking,” Q said. “He’s not coming back.” The words sat heavily in his mouth, but they needed to be aired, for the truth of it to be spoken aloud, if only to feline ears.

Q toed off his shoes and padded into the kitchen to serve said felines dinner, and Newton followed, jumping up on the counter between the cooker and refrigerator. 

“No yoghurt,” Q told him. It was a bad habit, and not one Q had instituted.

Newton gave a short, throaty chirp and bumped his head against Q’s arm. Q sighed and ran his hand over Newton’s back. That ghost was haunting everyone in the flat, not just the bipedal resident. 

Newton had taken to him immediately that first night, crawling up into his lap after he’d settled on the couch, staring into that rugged face with great, golden eyes. He’d stared down his nose at the animal, as though he didn’t quite know what to make of it. He’d glanced back up at Q with a look that begged him to ‘please do something about this’ which had sent Q into a fit of silent giggles. Eventually, Q had taken pity on him and lifted Newton off his lap before settling there himself.

Newton flicked his tail across Q’s hand and peered up at him.

“Me, too,” Q replied, leaning against the counter and holding himself upright by the heels of his hands. His chest hurt in a way that pulled at the slope of his shoulders, the ache spreading into his palms and across his ribs, his body trying to pull inward to fill the hollow space that continued to open up after these seemingly inconsequential moments.

He turned and pulled open the refrigerator, pushing aside half-empty Chinese takeaway containers and snagging the two tins of cat food that were perched in the back corner. He plopped the cold mince onto their plates and popped it into the microwave for a few seconds to take off the chill. Isabo came to investigate just before the microwave beeped, wrapping herself around Q’s legs as he tried to take the three steps across the kitchen to set the plates down by the bin. Unlike Q and Newton, Isabo seemed to be relatively unphased by the changes in their tiny household; but then again, she’d never really warmed up to anyone save Q, so perhaps it wasn’t such a surprise.

Q heated himself some leftover shrimp lo mein and took it out to the sitting room. He flipped through the telly, but there was nothing on. He tried to read a book, but the words kept blurring and he couldn’t follow the plot. He let his fingertips drift over the cover of his laptop, and the ghost of a thought blew across his mind,  _ ‘where is he?’ _ but Q valiantly ignored it, and the machine stayed closed.

He knew, by now, when the walls of the flat were going to start feeling too tight, and even though he also knew he really shouldn’t, he shrugged back into his coat and went out, back across the bridge this time, and northwest.

He didn’t realize where he was heading until he got there, staring up at the building and the empty black windows on the first floor. He’d only been inside a handful of times, both of them preferring the flavor of Q’s neighborhood over the tourist-laden streets of Notting Hill. Q had never asked him why he’d chosen such a busy area to live in when he professed to despise a crowd. Even on a weekday night it was full, the picturesque shops and pubs and restaurants overflowing with people.

Q slipped back into the crowd and moved off down the pavement, letting the swell and ebb of people choose his path.

It was another pub, full to bursting, everyone else in pairs or triples with their pints. Q ordered a martini and found a perch.

He wasn’t looking. He told himself that later, after, when he was half-afraid he really had been. But he didn’t care one way or another as he started chatting up the bloke who’d walked in, obviously a tourist, and more obviously on his own. 

It was almost troubling, how easily Q planted the idea in the man’s head to take him back to his hotel room. His American accent made Q want to shut him up, fill him up so he couldn’t speak. Q’s cock disappeared into a mouth that was the wrong shape, breath lacking the bite of scotch.

Q left in the dark, stubble burns along his thighs tingling as he pulled on his trousers. He thought he might have called out a name as he came down the bloke’s throat, but he couldn’t be sure. It was all a bit of a blur, thanks to the martinis.

All Q remembered the next morning was the awkward feeling of too-soft skin beneath his fingers and too-long hair against his thigh. 

“I have to stop doing this, Isabo,” he told her as he dished out her breakfast that morning. She blinked at him for a brief moment as if to say ‘no shit,’ then bent to eat.

He did stop. For an entire fortnight, the monotony of glass and steel and sidewalks and computer screens and forgotten paperwork and false flags on data constantly churning through the filters filled nearly every waking hour. 

But it couldn’t have gone smoothly forever. Not with this job, not with his responsibilities, no matter how flippantly he tried to treat it. 

It was a Tuesday afternoon when the alarm went up, just a quiet little blip at the top of his screen, flashing orange, but the implications of what he found were devastating. Plans for a bombing in Munich: hotels, a cafe, a concert, several targets simultaneously for maximum impact, and chatter about targeting the British Consulate. The familiarity of the scenario left a bitter, metallic taste at the back of his throat as he began to trace the chatter back to its source. 

Had this been before, he would have simply called Mallory and requested immediate action, then spent the next seventy-two hours in Q-branch, sleeping in hour-long bursts as the agents assigned neutralized the immediate danger. As it was, he was relegated to sending a memo. A fucking memo, and not even to Mallory, but to an intermediary official who, somehow, had better things to do.

He’d done exactly what had been requested of him, but the guilt seeped in anyway. This was supposed to be his domain, this sort of espionage and intelligence collection. That had been what they’d kept him on to  _ do _ , and he had thrown everything they’d let him keep in his arsenal at this problem, spent two entire days greasing the wheels of bureaucracy to get something accomplished. But he’d been hamstrung by bloody red tape and the in-triplicate nature of this new agency’s version of security: memos and interoffice emails that only ended up in the void.

The story was all over the news, vigils were held, solidarity reaffirmed. Three caskets were sent to London and buried with full honors. They were empty, the bodies hadn’t been recoverable. ‘Radicalized youth,’ was the popular theory regarding the perpetrators, all of whom had died in their respective blasts. There were convenient websites in their browser histories, manifestos typed up and saved to their hard drives. The names matched the sources Q had uncovered, but the whole scenario didn’t sit well with him. No amount of digging turned up alternate explanations, though, and so he finally had to let it drop. 

There was a furious exchange of emails over the course of those first few days. It began with Q trying to explain to Mallory that the system they had in place had failed the very people they were trying to protect and it ended in Q accusing Mallory of not fighting hard enough to keep the Double Oh program, because ‘if they’d still been active, this would have never happened.’ He knew, deep down, that it wasn’t strictly true. There would always be the few that snuck through the cracks, but it felt like the cracks had turned into canyons. 

Mallory’s response was Moneypenny walking through the door twenty minutes later.

“What the hell are you doing?” she hissed, leaning against his desk, her fingernails clicking against the grey laminate top.

“Working,” Q replied. He tried for nonchalant, but ended up sounding petulant.

Moneypenny leaned down close to Q’s ear.

“Don’t make me do this. Please. Not now.”

“Do what, exactly?” Q typed furiously, hoping to appear engrossed in his work.

She slid a sheet of paper in front of Q’s keyboard. Q glanced at it, unconcerned, until he caught the words ‘administrative leave’ in boldface. He abruptly stopped typing.

“What is this?”

“A warning.”

Q snapped his head up to glare at Moneypenny.

“Whatever is going on with you, it’s starting to affect you here, too, and I’m not the only one noticing.” She let her eyes slide over the room to indicate exactly who she meant, which was everyone.

“What are you saying?” Q just managed to not follow her eyes.

“I’m saying that, in general, boffins don’t send their bosses angry emails when their intelligence fails. You need to get your act together, or Mallory’s got no choice. He’s been understanding so far, but you’ve crossed a line today.”

She delivered the ultimatum sotto voce, but Q still felt like she was screaming.

“It wasn’t my intelligence that failed those people, Moneypenny.”

“It wasn’t Mallory’s fault, either. I’m going back upstairs, and I’m going to shred this. But Mallory is serious. And,” she pulled the paper off the desk and folded it in half, running her fingernails down the crease, “sign that declassification form, please. It’s been weeks.”

“Has it really?”

“Don’t press your luck.”

Q snarled softly in the back of his throat then bent down to retrieve the folder from the bottom desk drawer, threw it open, signed the paper, flipped the folder closed again, and held it up with a melodramatic flick of his wrist.

“Thank you,” Moneypenny pushed away from the desk and slid the folder into her portfolio, “Q.”

Q attempted a smile, but he felt a grimace break his face instead, and he winced at the harsh tug against his cheeks.

“Eve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We hoped you enjoyed our second installment and yes, we know what we did. 
> 
> Please stay tuned.


	3. A Night Within a Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once he was down, it seemed nearly impossible to get back up. But sometimes you have to grab onto fate instead of waiting for it to come pick you up off of the floor.

Q could remember a time when he’d welcomed the solitude of his flat, when the emptiness had been a relief. Now, that same emptiness echoed in his very bones with jarring precision, a physical presence that dogged him day and night, needled him in a way he couldn’t name. It wasn’t the same as waiting. There was no anticipation in this absence. 

He was never one to be the kind of social that led to large circles of friends that he could seek out for advice or companionship. He had come across a few that had become fixtures in his life, Moneypenny and Tanner specifically, though for the most part they had kept it professional, aside from fleeting moments of near-familial sympathy. 

No, that wasn’t exactly true. He and Moneypenny had become something more than colleagues quite a while ago. It wasn’t just anyone that would listen to him sob as he slowly lost himself in several bottles of wine for three nights straight, only to leave a stack of fluffy towels beside their shower for when he came to in the morning, a silent but decisive show of support. But that didn’t mean they met each other for drinks after work or texted each other the mundane details of their lives. Moneypenny was adept at, and insistent on, separating her career at MI6 (JSS now. He needed to remember that.) from the life she lead outside it. And he didn’t blame her. Look where mixing the two had gotten him.

He pulled up a new film he had been meaning to watch and settled in, leaning against the arm of the couch and tucking his feet up so his chin rested on one knee. The overwhelming feeling of ‘not there’ beside him on the couch was impossible to ignore. The absence of the warm wall of his chest under his cheek, the missing weight of his arm around his shoulders. Q’s scalp tingled with the memory of calloused fingers running through his hair.

The film couldn’t distract him from the aching lack of presence. It was another disappointment in his growing list. He paused the film and pushed himself up, snagging his laptop from the coffee table and moving to the peninsula counter that separated his sitting room from the kitchen, and also served as a dining table when it wasn’t overflowing with the detritus that collected around him like flotsam on a beach. 

Q had been tiptoeing around the flat on eggshells or weeks. The tragedy was that Q was still on that beach, hundreds of kilometers away, lost along the dark shore as he tread over the remains of the battered and broken bits the ocean had seen fit to throw against the sand. It hadn’t been eggshells under Q’s feet as he tried to navigate himself back to the wreck of his happiness, a sand castle that the tide had reclaimed and broken into nothingness. No, it had never been eggshells. It had been the ever-widening drifts of the remnants of his life ground into his raw soul without mercy.

There were three distinct stages of his life, now; the before, the during, and now, the after. The flat was slowly returning to the ‘before’ state, beginning with the counter, which was heaped over with post and stacks of books he’d been meaning to finish. How it had been in those first years of living alone; when alone hadn’t meant empty. There was no one here anymore to keep the mess in some kind of order, no one to make sure the post was sorted and the mugs migrated back to the kitchen. He cleared a small space in the clutter and went to work. 

He flipped to some of the files he had squirreled away from Q-branch. Returning to this kind of work might bring him some kind of joy again, even if it never saw the light of day.

He scrolled through the list, hovered for a moment over something he’d been calling ‘Smart Film’ for continuity’s sake. He’d been stuck on the algorithm for filling in the gaps in the infrared camera feed to play nicely with the facial recognition software, and of course neither one wanted to talk to the other. He opened it up and ran the test code, which came back with over sixty errors. He blinked at the list for a moment. He was nowhere near able to focus on a list of that size in his current state of mind, and closed out. He scrolled on.

He made it to the bottom of the list and there, marked with his shorthand as ‘complete’ was the Smart Blood Programme. Q stared at it for five long minutes, arguing with himself over whether or not it would even function anymore. The chips were not self-repairing, and had likely broken down completely by this point. Injecting him with the chips was the next-to-last time they’d ever touched, and Q’s chest tightened at the memory. It had been clinical, latex gloves and barely-contained irritation, a front for the desperation that sat in his chest. Q had wanted to reach out so badly, but the quiet fury of his departure had made it seem impossible.

He almost shut the machine. His hand was poised above the lid, ready to close it, ready to once again shrug into his parka and go walking, not caring in the least where he ended up, but he needed to know. He needed to know for sure if the chips were still active, because if they’d decayed beyond use, he could let it go. He wouldn’t have to prepare himself for the onslaught of memory every time he wanted to tinker with it. 

Yes, he would do it… for research. That’s all, just testing the robustness of his chips.

He opened the tracking script, and a wall of code, all of it virtually meaningless, cascaded across his screen. He picked out the characters he needed, inserted them into the unlock sequence, and the code resolved itself into a map, with a tiny green dot hovering over the Pacific coast of Mexico.

The chips were still active.

He was in Mexico.

As Q stared at the slowly pulsing dot, the map automatically zoomed in, and Q saw that it was moving slowly along a street in Acapulco. The dot stuttered a bit, it was not a smooth signal, and it was probably only a matter of days before it ceased to function altogether. 

He continued to stare as the dot inched its way toward the beach, and the ocean beyond, sliding down the waterfront and stopping at a house along the beach.

Q immediately closed out and snapped the lid shut with an angry  _ click.  _  He didn’t know which was worse, the fact that he was an ocean away, or that there was a memory, which Q could recall with perfect clarity, of him walking along the sand in blue swim shorts that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, a towel draped across his neck, his skin tanned to tawny gold. Had it really been three months ago when Q had been the one walking beside him? It felt like yesterday and years ago all at once.

Q shook himself, pulled his parka off the hook and shoved his arms back into the sleeves, slipped on his shoes, and left before the bitterness took him over completely.

The club was on the smallish side, and not terribly far from his flat. The bar was lit with pink and blue neon bent into abstract swirls interspersed with spotlights so the man behind the bar wouldn’t accidentally miss the glass he was filling. The dance floor took up well over two-thirds of the space with small round tables at chest height scattered around the edges, the only chairs in the entire space lined up along the walls and in front of the bar, encouraging the clientele to stay on the dance floor instead of perching around tables.

It was still early for the club crowd, but people were beginning to trickle in as the music set the rhythm of Q’s heart; the thump of bass incongruously soothing. It took up all the hollowness and made casual conversation all but impossible, which he appreciated more than he wanted to admit to.

He was tired of the emptiness, he was tired of the ghost of that man haunting his life. Maybe tonight he would exorcise his demons for good.

Q sipped his drink as the club slowly filled up with people, mostly in twos and threes, but a few solitary figures, like himself, who gravitated to the bar. None of them were really interesting, not at first glance. Until... well. 

It was going on half-eleven, and Q had had one too many martinis, when this gorgeous drink of water walked through the door. Dark hair, darker eyes, tall and sinewy, and a jaw Q could cut his lips on.

It wasn’t a matter of saying the right words tonight, there were no words in a place like this. It was glances and expressions and movement. Q slid through the crowd on the dance floor, unconsciously graceful as he dodged elbows and hips, coming to a stop near his target (and oh didn’t he wish he’d thought of that a bit differently? And yet the terminology wasn’t exactly wrong). He wedged in beside him, catching his eye, smirking. 

_ Good, now find the rhythm.  _

Q ignored the fact that the voice in his head sounded like him. He conveniently forgot that he was the one who’d taught him to move with the music instead of against it. He told the blossoming memory of their last dance to fuck off, thank you very much. 

Q’s head bobbed to the beat for a few moments, letting the thrum of bass flow into his core and out through his limbs. 

_ Now make your move.  _

It was all about being just a little bit demanding, a little bit entitled, but only a little. Demand his attention with a touch, pull him out of that space between the tables with a hand splayed at the small of his back. 

He was not going to fill the void by becoming the man who had made it. He wasn’t.

They danced, legs a delicate tangle, hands on chests and backs and arms, and as the tempo picked up, it was the mingling of breath and press of chests. 

It was more than a dance, it was conversation. It was stating intent with more clarity than words could ever express. 

_ Now I'm going to dip you. Relax.  _

Q felt the shiver run down his spine as the words ran through his head in that low silk-and-gravel rumble. But Q did as they commanded, sliding a hand up between shoulder blades and taking a step forward. 

Time stopped. 

Q stared at the man below him, his dark hair, his eyes that shone black in the neon glare of the dance floor. It was all so utterly different. The man was gorgeous, no doubt, but it didn't feel like  _ him _ . Which had been exactly the point when he’d started, but had suddenly become repellent.

The music stopped abruptly, the sudden silence deafening, and Q pulled the man upright again. The DJ made an announcement that Q couldn't quite make out as he still reeled from how close he still was to this stranger, too close. Around them, the crowd laughed. 

A woman in a crown and sash with the word ‘bride’ on it was foisted up onto a small raised platform at the front of the dance floor, and another woman was taking a microphone from the DJ. 

As the first piano run glistened through the sound system, everybody started murmuring, and Q’s dance partner turned to him with a grin, still pressed nearly into his side, but Q didn’t see, he wasn’t there. He was on a boardwalk, a crescent moon hanging in the sky like a hammock, palm trees swaying in a breeze that carried the melody out over the Mediterranean. 

Before the first words of the song were voiced, Q turned and fled, shoving people out of his way as he stumbled through the crowd to the exit. It took too long, he could hear the words floating over the crowd in a thready falsetto, and if there were ever words he never wanted to hear again it was those, and he shoved a bit too hard and heard an ‘Oi, mate,’ behind him as he reached the doors. 

“And though I close my eyes…”

Q reached the pavement at the exact moment his stomach refused to hold its contents. He made it to the kerb, barely, and vomited spectacularly into the gutter. 

He staggered away, aware of the eyes in the crowd waiting to get in following him, around the corner, wiping at his mouth with his handkerchief. He thought about putting it back in his pocket, but even drunk as he was that felt disgusting, so he shoved it into a bin instead. The next street over, he found a chair that a cafe had neglected to collect at closing, and his eyes slid shut as he dropped into the cold iron seat.

“Alright, there, mate?”

Q’s eyes snapped open. Had he fallen asleep? His vision came into focus and there standing in front of him was a police officer. Lovely. That was all he needed: a PND for public drunkenness. Mallory was already itching for a reason to give him a more permanent holiday.

“Yes,” Q said, sliding his fingers under his glasses and rubbing at his eyes a bit. To his utter dismay he felt the grit of sleep in the corners. “Yes, I’m fine. Just needed some air, you know.” Q shrugged, hoping he came off as unthreatening. It wouldn’t take too much effort at this point, and if he could avoid the charge, all the better.

“Well, I hope you’ve gotten enough air, because it’s time for you to be getting home.”

Q snorted. It was where he kept his things, but it hadn’t been home for a long time.

“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Q shoved himself out of the chair and stood without too much trouble.

“You alright to get home?”

“Should be.”

The officer nodded.

“Have a good evening.”

“Good evening.” Q did an admirable job of not wobbling as he took off down the pavement, taking the first turning to be out of sight of the officer even though it would be a longer walk home. He didn’t know who that officer was, but he hoped he got a promotion. Disgorging his stomach contents into the gutter should have landed him a ticket.

Q clattered into his flat, steadying himself on the wall as he toed off his shoes. He wallowed into his bedroom and began to strip, his shirt still smelling slightly of vomit, and he wrinkled his nose as he pulled it off over his head. He let his trousers slide off, pooling at his feet, and as he went to step out of them he caught his toes and fell heavily beside the bed.

He lay there for a moment, considering actually just staying there on the floor for the rest of the night. He would have, if the floor hadn’t been so bloody hard. He reached a hand out to pull himself up, and as he did, his fingers brushed a piece of paper lodged between the bedframe and the bedside table.

Q’s heart gave a terrible sideways jerk as he pulled the fragment of paper out and brought it up to his face. It was just a scrap, probably a receipt that he’d neglected to take out of his pocket at some point, there was no reason for it to be anything more than that. But as he brought it into focus, his eyes struggling to decipher the scrawl, he stopped breathing.

_ Q, Went for breakfast. Don’t you dare leave this bed. Love, J _

He recognized the shape of that J, the oversize top loop with an almost angular bend. He traced the words with a shaking finger, going over the capital ‘L’ again and again. Gooseflesh rose on his arms and spread across his back. 

Maybe he was dreaming. Maybe he’d hit his head and this was all just some kind of fever dream and he’d wake up, shivering on the floor, and there would be no note. Would it be worse, or better, if it had never existed? The question was moot. It was here, in his shaking fingers, as real as the rug under his shoulder and the bruises that would be on his hip and elbow in the morning. 

Had this, too, been part of the game?

But even as the thought surfaced, he dismissed it. They’d been too careful with that word, studiously avoiding it. There had been times, and Q could remember them all, when their eyes had met and that word had wanted to crawl out from between his lips. What would James do if he gave it a name? He’d been afraid of breaking the spell with it, that if he spoke it aloud, what they shared would crumble into dust.

The one morning James had vanished from his bed without waking him was the one morning after he’d possibly, half-asleep, confessed. Q had been furious, mostly with himself, but had unleashed his fury on James when he’d walked back in, carrying a bag of cinnamon buns and a cup of coffee. He’d accused James of playing a game, thrown everything they’d shared in his face, made it out as nothing more than a intricate lie for James’ own amusement. Despite everything he’d ever been shown to the contrary, he’d chosen to believe the worst.  He was a fool, and a coward.

Q pulled himself up to his knees. He leaned his forehead against the mattress, cradling the paper in his hands, reading the words over and over until it was only a series of senseless letters, all but that final word. An errant tear slid down his nose and landed with an almost imperceptible plip on the edge of the paper. Q sniffed and ran a hand under his nose, trying to push the tears down again. He’d shed enough of them already, though somehow these felt different.

“James.”

The name was barely a whisper, quiet and broken in the stillness of the empty flat. Q was shocked that it actually escaped past the ache in his heart.

It was all his fault, all of it, the whole bloody mess, the strain and the anger and the petty sniping was because he’d not bothered to look at the bedside table before flinging the duvet onto the floor in a fit of pique. This tiny scrap, this delicate paper kiss, could have saved them both so much grief.

_ I have to apologize _ , he thought stupidly, it was far too late for such a gesture. But as he continued to stare down at the paper nestled in his hand, he knew he had to try. He couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t try. Fate had handed him this chance, it had shown him what he’d been too afraid to see, and he needed to take the path he’d been shown to its conclusion. He wasn’t expecting it to change anything, not really, not after all this time. But a tiny silver thread of ‘maybe’ wove its way around his heart, no matter how desperately he tried to snip it. Even if James never forgave him, at least Q would know. He could put the doubts to rest that had been plaguing him ever since James had walked out that grey October morning. 

There was one tiny problem: how the bloody fuck was he supposed to get to Acapulco?

There were two things of which Q was certain. One: he needed to cross the Atlantic Ocean with as much speed as possible, and two: he was absolutely terrified of flying. He knew it was irrational, but there was something about being buoyed up thousands of meters in the air by sheets of three millimeter-thick aluminum that made his knees turn to jelly. Even thinking about being up there made the bile rise in the back of his throat. That did not change his resolve, however, and he was determined to find a way to get on a plane, and stay on, without an air marshall shoving him into an overhead compartment. 

He forced himself to wait until six in the morning to call Moneypenny. She’d looked after Newton and Isabo when he’d taken that train to Austria, and before that when he and James had been on holiday. He hoped she’d do it again now. He’d spent the intervening hours booking a flight to Atlanta, with a connection to Acapulco, and packing. Not much. He didn’t expect to be gone long. But he’d need clean pants at least, and his toothbrush. He also approved a week’s holiday for himself, complete with Mallory’s signature. He’d let Mallory know when he got back.

At six o’clock precisely, Q tapped ‘call.’

“Hello?” Q could hear the sleep in her voice through the phone.

“Moneypenny,” Q said, his own voice sharp in his ears.

“Q? What are you doing calling at… bloody hell, is it really six in the morning?”

“Yes. I need you to watch the cats.”

“Now?”

“Not immediately, no, I don’t leave until this afternoon.”

“Leave? Where are you going?”

Q heard the opening and closing of a refrigerator in the background.

“On holiday.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Q did not want to elaborate over the phone. What he was thinking of doing was flat out idiotic and trying to explain it to someone else even more so. He didn’t even want to think about how he was going to try to convince Moneypenny it was worth the time and expense. 

“It is too early to be cryptic with me. Tell me what’s going on. Now.”

Q heaved a sigh. He wasn’t going to be able to get out of it.

“Fine, but not on the phone. Come over and say hello to the cats so they’ll remember you, and I’ll explain.”

“This does not sound promising.”

“Just… please.”

“Alright, twenty minutes.”

Moneypenny was good as her word, and twenty-two minutes later Q’s intercom buzzed. He let Moneypenny up, and before long they were sitting together at the kitchen peninsula, tea steaming in mugs. Q had even stacked the post and set out the apple basket. 

Q’s laptop was open on the counter, James’ green dot pulsing softly over a house along the western edge of the bay. The heart monitors showed that he was likely asleep, which made sense seeing as how it was midnight there. Q could see him laid out on the bed, Dr. Swann’s blonde hair spread out over his chest, both of them smiling gently in their sleep. The image made him falter, and he pushed it away. 

Every few minutes the dot would fade out completely, and Q would stare at the screen intently, willing it to ping again, and after an interminable wait that was probably only about thirty seconds or so, the green dot would return, and he would release the breath he was holding.

“This looks like -” Moneypenny began.

“It is.”

“Shouldn’t you have - ”

“Probably.”

“Right. So, why are we looking at it?”

Q sighed and wondered where to begin, and decided she probably knew enough that he could just start from last night, leaving out the bit where he tripped over his own trousers, and began relaying the events that had lead to them sitting at the counter in his flat at half six in the morning.

“You found a note,” Moneypenny said flatly after he’d finished, one eyebrow raised in disbelief.

“This note.” Q held out the paper and Moneypenny took it gingerly between her finger and thumb, flipping it over and reading the words Q had memorized hours ago.

“Ok,” Moneypenny said. She looked at him expectantly as she handed the note back.

Q shut his eyes and huffed.

“This changes everything,” he said, willing Moneypenny to realize what this actually meant for him.

“What, exactly, does it change?” she asked, brows furrowed. Apparently he hadn’t been clear enough.

“We had a fight, right before he left for Mexico. A bad one. I said some things I shouldn't have because I didn't know this existed.” Q pulled the paper back, and turned it over in his fingers. “I need to apologize.”

“Isn't it a little late?”

This was the crux of his dilemma. It was a little late. More than a little. But he couldn't let it lie. His jaw clenched with the frustration of it all. He wanted to scream at the heavens about how unfair it all was, but that made it seem childish and ridiculous. The boiling miasma in his gut did not feel either childish or ridiculous, it was a little like lava and a little like birds trying to fly out of his throat. 

“I have to try.”

“I think you're setting yourself up just to be knocked back down.”

“But it’s my fault!” Q clenched his fist against the counter. “He told me, and I didn’t listen! And here it is, in black and white on this tiny scrap of paper, and it’s all my fault. I didn’t... “ Q looked at Moneypenny, tears threatening to spill from his eyes. “I didn’t trust him. I didn’t trust him.” Q’s face suddenly hardened, as though a piece of the puzzle had fallen into place. “You told me not to.”

“I never said not to trust him,” Moneypenny said. “I told you what I did because I wanted you to be careful.”

“Careful? Oh, I was careful. Too careful. Always stepping back, making sure he had his space, not being too demanding of him or his time because every time he came back he came back  _ to me _ and I didn't know when he’d get tired of it. When he’d let  _ me _ bleed out on the floor of a shabby little hotel in Turkey.” Q took a breath, “Metaphorically,” he added lamely.

“This has nothing to do with Ronson.”

“Doesn't it? Because you seemed pretty convinced that was how it would end up.”

Moneypenny stared at her tea in silence for a long moment. When she lifted her head, her bottom lip was caught between her teeth, and her eyes did not speak of pity but of chagrin.

“I didn’t mean-” she began, then stopped and stared at the pulsing green dot on the screen. “I didn’t think he would-” she stopped again, unable to finish her thought. “He’s an incorrigible flirt, Q, and I was afraid you’d see something in it that wasn’t there, and I didn’t want to see you used like that. I wanted you to be prepared. I never thought-” Her eyes landed on the note in Q’s fingers. “We’ve all underestimated him, I think.”

“And this once, Eve, just this once, I need to give him the benefit of the doubt.” Q met Moneypenny’s eyes, trying to will her to see. “Even if I come back to London with my tail tucked firmly between my legs, at least I’ll know I’ve tried. Can you understand?”

Isabo took that moment to loudly complain about the lateness of her breakfast, and Q excused himself to go serve it.

“I don’t think you’re doing yourself any favors,” Moneypenny said as Q shuffled through the kitchen. “But I suppose I can see where you’re coming from.” She took a sip of her tea. “I only have one question. How are you going to get there?”

“I’m going to fly.”

“You’re not.” The disbelief in Moneypenny’s voice just about made Q rethink his entire strategy, but there was no other way to do it. Ships would take too long, James could be anywhere in two weeks, and the chips could be completely useless by then.

“I am.”

“But… but you hate flying.”

“Melatonin. And Valium.” As long as he stayed awake until he got on the plane, a double dose of melatonin would knock him flat out for the entire flight to Atlanta, and a bit of Valium for the connecting flight to Acapulco should keep him in his seat.

“You think it’ll work?”

“Only one way to find out.”

“You’re going to call me, you understand, when you land. I want to make sure you didn’t lock yourself in the loo or get escorted off the plane or something equally ridiculous. If you’re going to run off half-cocked after this bastard, the least you can do is keep me informed.”

This sounded like the Moneypenny he remembered, the concerned colleague, the probably-friend.

“Yes. I will.” Q smiled at her over the counter. “Thank you, Moneypenny. You’re… you’ve been a good friend.”

Moneypenny scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“I’ll have a bottle of wine waiting at mine for when you come home, yeah?”

“Pessimist.”

“Realist, I like to think. But if you need to go get punched in the face one last time, I can at least be there to patch you up when you get back.”

Q shot her a wry smile.

“Thank you.”

“You're welcome. Now, if you don't mind, I think I'm going to go home and crawl back into bed for an hour, so I’ll leave you to it. Don't forget to get to the airport early, and for God’s sake don't try to be clever.”

“I never  _ try _ .” The smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth, and he was surprised he still remembered how. 

Moneypenny shook her head.

“I hope you get the answers you need,” she said, smiling. She slipped out the door before Q could decide what she meant.

  
  


Q checked once more before boarding his flight, but it didn't worry him to find that the green blip on his screen had finally faded out of the system. The chips had done their job to the very last though, leading Q back to James.

The announcement for boarding blared over the loudspeaker, and Q glanced up at the podium where a flight attendant was doing her best to keep a smile plastered on her face while a portly red-faced man argued with her about his seat.

He tucked his laptop back into his bag, hitched it on his shoulder, and pulled out his boarding pass without a second glance. 

Controlled breathing. He needed to remember the controlled breathing. 

He marched down the tunnel, keeping his eyes straight ahead, his hand clutching the strap of his messenger bag until his knuckles were white. Nine hours in the air to Atlanta, a three-hour layover, then another five to Acapulco. As far as flights went, this was a doozy.

As he approached the entrance to the aircraft proper, he paused and took another deep breath. He could do this. He had to. 

The flight attendant smiled at him.

“Enjoy your flight, sir,” he said.

“Thanks,” Q replied. “Um.” He pulled his lips between his teeth. He’d poured over the seating chart, rearranged other passengers so he would have an interior seat (the least distressing for anxious fliers) at the rear of the plane (least likely to be injured in the event of a crash) and loaded his phone with six different albums he knew by heart (Savage Garden had gotten him through the worst of sixth form and, though he’d never admit it to anyone else, could still calm him down better than stuffy old Beethoven any day) and had downed his melatonin tablets with a swig of water about ten minutes before walking down the tunnel. Now was the difficult part.

“I… I’m a rather nervous flier,” Q murmured, as though he’d done this before. As though he was just a bit apprehensive and not ready to turn and run full tilt away from this flying death trap. “I wondered if you might…” he faltered, then stopped, shrugging. This was ridiculous.

To his relief, the attendant nodded, the false smile slipping into honest concern.

“Please call if you need anything.”

“Thank you,” Q said, his lips lifting in something he hoped resembled a smile. It was one thing to book a flight, and quite another to actually board the plane. The aisles were narrow, the woman in the seat next to him was chatty, and he sagged in relief when he could finally slip his headphones on and close his eyes after the attendant completed the safety demonstration.

He felt the plane begin to move down the runway, but was asleep before it began its ascent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you SO much for reading, we hope you enjoyed it.
> 
> This story will be continued in the next fic in the LVeR series!

**Author's Note:**

> As always, this has been a collaborative effort with [jordankaine](http://www.jordankaine.tumblr.com), who is not only a cheerleader and excellent editor, but also a good friend and all-around wonderful human being.
> 
> My blog for this fandom, and several others is [timetospy](http://www.timetospy.tumblr.com).
> 
> Kudos and comments mean the world to us, so please, if you liked this (or if you want to scream at us about the pain, I wouldn't blame you), don't hesitate to let us know.


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